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Charles Feinstein and South African Economic History (review of C.H. Feinstein, An Economic History of South Africa: Conquest, Discrimination and Development, CUP 2005)

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Nicoli Nattrass (2006). Charles Feinstein and South African Economic History (review of C.H. Feinstein, An Economic History of South Africa: Conquest, Discrimination and Development, CUP 2005). Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Heritage in Southern Africa). Taylor & Francis.
Type journal article
Scope Economics and economic history of apartheid
Method synthesis review
Period studied 1900–1994
Regions South Africa
Themes origins segregation, manufacturing industrial policy, labour markets wages, comparative theory, methods data sources
Citation key nattrass2006

Argument

Nattrass reviews Feinstein's economic history of South Africa and treats it as a worthy successor to de Kiewiet and an essential book. She argues that it gets beyond the liberal-radical stalemate by combining numerate mainstream economics with radical insights. As she reports it, Feinstein shows that South Africa's comparative economic performance worsened across the twentieth century, largely because apartheid constrained manufacturing and the domestic market. He criticises both traditions: liberals for missing the violent roots of labour supply, radicals for treating 'cheap' black labour as cheap. He frames the story through Domar's land-labour model, in which closing the escape route to free land produced racialised coercion. Nattrass's reservations are the sparse referencing, the thinner treatment of the late- and post-apartheid roots of inequality, and the book's greater strength on the pre-apartheid and apartheid origins.

Evidence and method

A review essay. It draws on the reviewer's reading of Feinstein's book, its 'guide to further reading', and biographical details about Feinstein. It presents no new data of its own.

Place in the debates

Findings

  • Feinstein finds that South Africa's relative economic performance deteriorated through the twentieth century, largely owing to apartheid constraints on manufacturing and the domestic market. (p. 2)

    Charles shows that South Africa's comparative economic performance worsened steadily throughout the twentieth century and that this was in large part a consequence of apartheid policies constraining the growth of manufacturing and the domestic market.

  • Feinstein rejects the radical premise that black labour was cheap, since low wages and coercion suppressed productivity growth. (p. 2)

    because it undermined the productivity growth necessary for sustained increases in employment and output

  • Feinstein criticises early liberals for neglecting the violent origins of the labour supply. (p. 2)

    of early liberals like Hobart Houghton for their failure to appreciate the violent roots that shaped labour supply

  • Feinstein uses Domar's model rather than either the liberal or radical tradition to structure his narrative. (p. 2)

    Domar's classic analysis of the stagnation caused by abundant land and scarce labour

  • The Domar framework turns the capitalist problem into one of closing off free land to labour. (p. 2)

    The challenge for capitalism thus becomes how to close the escape route to free land.

  • The racial form of coercion is attributed to settlement history, as the Russian comparison shows. (p. 2)

    tsarist Russia solved the same problem with class-based rather than racial oppression

  • Nattrass characterises the historiographical stalemate that Feinstein had to navigate: numerate neoclassical economists against innumerate radicals. (p. 2)

    neoclassical economists highlighting the negative impact of apartheid on growth, and the passionate, but largely innumerate, radical critics who saw apartheid as the engine of capitalist development

  • Feinstein treated Marxist ideas as testable hypotheses and let empirical evidence decide. (p. 2)

    inevitably relegated Marxist insights to the status of hypotheses to be tested

  • The book's coverage is uneven: it is strongest on the historical roots of apartheid and thinner on the late- and post-apartheid roots of inequality. (p. 3)

    it is strongest in its analysis of the historical roots of the apartheid economy

  • A criticism: the text is sparsely referenced, which obscures Feinstein's debts to and disagreements with other scholars. (p. 3)

    the reader is presented with the sparse prose of a textbook

Evidence ledger

Sources used

Source Kind Period How used
Charles Feinstein, An Economic History of South Africa (CUP, 2005), as described in the review: the academic literature supplemented by the author's own statistical analysis secondary literature compilation Pre-industrial period to 1994 The reviewed book is presented as a synthesis of the existing academic literature, supplemented by new statistical analysis, and the review's assessments rest on this description rather than on any primary data.
Feinstein's 'guide to further reading' broken down by topic secondary literature compilation n/a Cited as evidence of how broadly the reviewed author read in the social, political and economic historiography.
British 'imperial archive' / archival research in Hyam and Henshaw, The Lion and the Springbok (second review on the same pages) state archives 1899-1990s The second review describes the book's reliance on 'proper' archival research on high politics, which is not the subject of the Feinstein review.

Inference

Quantification: None.

The document is a short book review. It makes evaluative judgements about Feinstein's synthesis, which combines the secondary literature, new statistical analysis and Domar's land-labour model, and it gives no primary evidence of its own.

Key claims

Claim Basis Strength
Feinstein shows that South Africa's comparative economic performance worsened through the twentieth century, largely because apartheid constrained manufacturing and the domestic market. (p. 2) The reviewer's summary of Feinstein's book, which rests on the synthesis of the literature plus his statistical analysis. The review itself presents no data. Asserted
Black labour was not really cheap, because it undermined the productivity growth needed for sustained employment and output growth, which is a critique of the radical school. (p. 2) The reviewer quotes Feinstein's argument. No underlying data are cited in the review. Asserted
Feinstein frames South African history with Domar's model of stagnation under abundant land and scarce labour, rather than with the liberal or radical traditions. (p. 2) The reviewer's characterisation of the book's theoretical framework. There is no empirical test in the review. Asserted
The book is strongest on the historical roots of the apartheid economy and weaker on late- and post-apartheid inequality. (p. 3) The reviewer's own reading of the book's coverage. Asserted
The book uses references sparingly, so its engagement with the historiography is hard to trace. (p. 3) The reviewer's observation of the book's text and its further-reading guide. Asserted

The author's caveats

The reviewer notes only that the book cites sources sparingly and reads like a textbook, which makes its debts to other scholars hard to trace. She raises no explicit caveats about the underlying data.

Gaps in the evidence

The review gives no information on the specific statistical series, censuses or archives behind Feinstein's claims, so the strength of his evidence cannot be judged from it. Testing the claim that cheap labour was not really cheap would need sectoral productivity, wage and employment series, which exist in official statistics and Feinstein's own tables. A reader would need the book itself, and its notes, to check how much is new data and how much is synthesis.

Replicability: Not applicable.